1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of computer processing and, more particularly, to defining a time-based lifecycle policy for a data image.
2. Description of the Related Art
As computer memory storage and data bandwidth increase, so does the amount and complexity of data that business and industry manage each day. A large portion of the data that may be managed in an enterprise involves content managed for a company or workgroup. Such information may include electronic documents, announcements, tasks, discussion topics, and so forth. Depending on the business value of the information, access to certain information may be secure and private while other information may have wider or even public access.
Because the various examples of stored data may frequently contain crucial information, the contents of information servers and end-user systems may be backed up to a backup storage to prevent loss of data. In such a case, the dedicated server and storage subsystem may include a backup system. A backup system attempts to reduce the amount of data and time to backup data to protect a machine. Some methods use de-duplication to reduce the amount of data to backup, but such methods may still consume time and network bandwidth to implement. For example, performing a scheduled backup, even an incremental backup, on an end-user laptop via a network, consumes time to scan files and detect changed files. The scanning and detecting of files consumes a large amount of time prior to using a de-duplication or other method.
In addition to consuming a large amount of time in performing backups, administering and supporting an information technology (IT) infrastructure on a large number of end-user systems presents a significant challenge. An IT administrator may develop a management system for data backup and data protection; data recovery, restore, and restart; archiving and long-term retention; and day-to-day processes and procedures necessary to manage a storage architecture. This management system, which may be referred to as an information lifecycle management (ILM), refers to a set of strategies for administering storage systems on computing devices. Operational aspects of ILM include applying certain policies to the effective management of information throughout its useful life.
The utilization of ILM allows a user to automatically migrate a backup image from one storage tier to another. Current methods utilize an as-soon-as-possible (ASAP) approach, an available capacity approach, or a data classification approach for determining when to perform a duplication of a backup image. However, utilizing the ASAP approach is problematic because a corresponding storage resource may be utilized by another backup or other operation. Regarding the available capacity approach, again, another operation may be accessing the storage resource. In addition, it may be difficult to determine an available amount of disk space that provides consistent results. If a predetermined limit, such as a high watermark value, is set too high, then one or more backup operations may fail due to insufficient available storage space. If the predetermined limit, such as a low watermark value, is set too low, then some available storage space may not be sufficiently utilized. For the data classification based solution, data may be moved to another storage tier too early, which lengthens a restore operation, since the data is in the other storage tier. Other times, the data may be moved to another storage tier too late, which causes the current storage tier to become near full. Now backup operations lengthen in duration and capacity costs increase.
In view of the above, improved systems and methods for defining a time-based lifecycle policy to a data image are desired.